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King Kong

Don't forget Kid Kong was in Buster. "Gleep!"
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
I assume there will be plush Kongs, Kong figures, etc.
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I should have checked - there is loads:

Kong vs V-Rex Battling Game
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009 ... ntmagaz-21

Roaring Kong Plush
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0008 ... ntmagaz-21

Kong Mini Plush
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000A ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Extendable Arms (like the Hulk/Thing fists)
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0008 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Kong vs Juvenile V-Rex
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Gripping Kong
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Kong vs Piranhadon
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Vastatosaurus Rex
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Kong vs Terapusmordox
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

King Kong Action Figures Kong vs Venatosaurus
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007 ... ntmagaz-21

I have to say I am slightly let down by the fact that the giant dinosaur is called Vastosaurus. ;)
 
Saw the extended trailer yesterday - it does look rather spiffing :). I'm very glad Jackson's retained the period setting - nothing dates like the contemporary.

Just waiting for various fundies to point to the T Rexs as justification for their view that they walked the Earth at the same time as Adam and Eve... bet someone will ;).
 
went to see Toho's King Kong Escapes (1967), sometime in the early Seventies!

http://www.godzilla.stopklatka.pl/escapese.htm
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By Jove, I think that's the one! Okay, the poster isn't quite the same as I remember ... but it was ages ago, so my memory of it is probably as reliable as a politician's promise. Still, it proves that a Kong/godzilla/mechakong feature came out in the seventies, which is good enough for me. Can sleep easy now knowing that most of my childhood wasn't spent in a parallel universe...
 
This sounds great:

PREPARE FOR KONG SESSION
(2005-11-23)


The American Cinematheque presents KONG SESSION at the Aero (December 3) and the Egyptian (December 16 - 18) Theatres. Whoever thought that King Kong, a big ape on top of the Empire State Building way back in 1933, fueled by stop-motion animation and existing only on celluloid, would still be generating such an incredible film legacy? Sequels (SON OF KONG), sort-of-sequels (MIGHTY JOE YOUNG), variations (Japan's KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and KING KONG ESCAPES, Britain's KONGA, Hong Kong's THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, to name only a few), remakes (producer, Dino DeLaurentis' KING KONG), sequels-to-remakes (the delightfully harebrained KING KONG LIVES where the the giant ape receives an artificial heart transplant!) have followed in the original KING KONG's wake -- the mind boggles!

For more info, visit the American Cinematheque website.
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www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=he ... ch=&page=0

The site mentioned is:
www.americancinematheque.com
 
barfing_pumpkin said:
I still can't fathom the movie poster, though. All I can remember is that it appeared as an ad in one of those old IPC kids weeklies (Buster, Whizzer & Chips et al - I can't remember which one though), and featured - as far as I can remember - a design showing Kong, Godzilla (I think) and what was presumably 'Mecha-Kong' looming over Big Ben as they did battle. Presumably it was a re-release of King Kong Escapes (this would have been in the late seventies, early eighties) and the intervening years have clouded my memory of the subject. Either that, or it was another sequel...
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I can remember a Monster Fun Summer Special circa 1976-77 which had some full-page pics from old monster movies scattered in between the strips. They may have had humourous captions added, but my fading memory gets the better of me! I do recall that there were shots of Godzilla and his assembled supporting cast from Destroy All Monsters, the elephant / octopus thing from Space Amoeba and one of Gorgo (or more accurately, Gorgo's Mum) destroying Tower Bridge! She also has a go at Big Ben, as seen in the link below:

http://www.fantascienza.com/cinema/multimedia/Gorgo/BigBen.mov

Big Ben also features in the truly appalling-but-fun British Kong rip-off, Konga, when the titular ape, after being unwisely fed some sort of growth hormones or something (which have the side effect of turning him from a chimp into a gorilla) goes on a low-budget rampage in front of a ropey model of the clock tower whilst waving a Michael Gough doll around.

I'm definitely going to get my hands on the R2 box set! Whilst I refuse to give the colourised version the time of day, I can't wait to see King Kong vs Godzilla again, for the first time since an early morning ITV showing back in the 70s! Never seen King Kong Escapes, but I've wanted to ever since I read about it in a slim book on the various movies from around the time of the Dino de Horrendous remake. ISTR that Usbourne's Monsters book (part of their series for tiny Forteans back in the 70s) had a small pic of Mechani-Kong on the pages dealing with film monsters!
 
Yeah that Kong marathons throws up some good ones:

Konga (1961)

Great working title "I Was a Teenage Gorilla" ;)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0055058/

There looks to be an R1 release in the piepline (of course - you'd be daft not to!!) - out on 6th December:
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BIT ... enantmc-20

Although the old Konga posters don't show Big Ben that new cover does.

---------
The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

Although somehow the original Chinese title has a good ring to it: Hsing Hsing wang!!

www.imdb.com/title/tt0076164/

Cheap as chips R1:
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/63058 ... ntmagaz-21
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6305803 ... enantmc-20
 
Michael Gough is the unsung star of British horror, especially in stuff like the hilarious Konga. "Help! Put me down!"

Mighty Peking Man is pretty funny too, but most of the tension arises from whether the heroine will manage to stay in her skimpy costume or not.
 
OK the premier was last night (and Peter Jackson looked like he'd lost weight).

Some reviews:

King Kong


Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles 07 December 2005 06:00


Dir: Peter Jackson. US. 2005. 189mins.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong is Jurassic Park, War Of The Worlds, Jaws, ET and Raiders Of The Lost Ark all rolled into one mammoth, three-hour rollercoaster ride. As if saying to Steven Spielberg “Anything you can do, I can do better”, Jackson delivers a resounding audience-pleaser which pushes the boundaries of digital technology and features more setpieces than any one film should be able to handle.

Its box-office success is guaranteed when it opens in practically all territories on Dec 14 (in the UK, Dec 16). Although it went over budget to a dizzying $207m and runs to more than three hours, it has massive advance want-to-see, just about delivers on the hype and is destined to become a giant-sized worldwide hit.

Jackson leaves the audience breathless at the spectacle on show, but he also takes great pains to generate pathos and, like Titanic and ET before it, Kong stirs up the emotions. That potent blend could well elevate the film into the all-time box office pantheon up amongst Jackson’s three Lord Of The Rings instalments.

Unlike Titanic and ET, it’s not an awards-type picture – other than in technical categories. Jackson has stated that his intention was to reinvent the grand escapism of the beloved 1933 original for a new generation. In that he is successful.

Highbrow critics, however, will focus on the plot and script structure, which are riddled with loopholes and lapses in logic.

And, yes, it is too long. It’s well over an hour before we meet Kong, and it takes a good 45 minutes to reach Skull Island. The middle stretch on the island features one relentless chase or fight after the other, at least one of which feels dispensable. And the final scenes, in which Kong and Ann Darrow perch atop the Empire State Building are protracted to an almost frustrating degree.

Jackson opens the film with a montage of New York in Depression-era 1933 (featuring digital tableaux of cityscapes from the period) before introducing us to Ms Darrow (Watts), an actress playing to empty houses in a burlesque show who can barely afford to eat. When she and her troupe are barred from entry into the theatre one afternoon, she wanders the streets and contemplates a move into stripping.

Across town, ambitious film-maker Carl Denham (Black) is showing footage to his financial backers and announcing to them that he is mounting an expedition to the mysterious undiscovered Skull Island, where he will use their money to shoot the rest of the opus. They deny him permission, but Denham makes a speedy exit out of the building with the film reels and plans to set sail anyway.

With the investors and the police on his heels, he has only a few hours to find his leading lady before leaving. He finds Ann trying to steal an apple and persuades her to join him, saying that he is sailing to Singapore to make the film. She agrees only when she discovers that her favourite playwright Jack Driscoll (Brody) is writing the screenplay.

On board the SS Venture, Denham bribes the captain Englehorn (Kretschmann) to make a hasty departure, trapping Driscoll on board against his wishes and leaving the police on the dockside.

Among the characters we meet as the voyage sets sail are Denham’s resourceful assistant Preston (Hanks), the seasoned cook Lumpy (Serkis), wise first mate Hayes (Parke) and a young stowaway, now crew member (Bell) who is hungry for adventure.

Ann and Jack fall for each other on the voyage, but their happiness is not long-lasting after Denham and Englehorn steer the ship into unchartered waters. The ship comes across Skull Island in a thick bank of fog and is almost wrecked trying to avoid the hazardous rocks which litter its coastline.

Denham rushes ashore with Jack, Ann and his leading man Bruce Baxter (Chandler) but before a massive gateway, the party is set upon by natives who kill one of the cameramen. Before long, they have kidnapped Ann and offer her up as a sacrifice to whatever creatures live beyond the gates.

Enter Kong, a 25-foot tall gorilla who snatches Ann away and takes her deep inland clutched in his hand. The two develop a rapport, Ann singing, dancing and juggling to appease the beast and Kong amused by her antics.

Driscoll leads a party of sailors and film crew to find her but the team is gradually diminished by encounters with a stampede of brontosauruses, some nasty velociraptors and a host of out-sized bugs and creepy-crawlies at the bottom of a ravine.

Kong meanwhile battles three T-Rexes to protect Ann and saves her life at the risk of his own, earning her trust and his increased affection.

Kong is eventually lured out of the jungle when Driscoll finds Ann and rescues her, but Denham has already foreseen the ape’s pursuit and sets a trap which leaves the beast drugged by chloroform and eventually bound for New York City.

There, of course, he is displayed by Denham in a Broadway theatre to a full house (to the strains of Max Steiner’s original score for the 1933 film). But enraged by the audience and the flash photography, Kong escapes his shackles and goes on a rampage through New York in search of Ann.

Jackson has wisely cast a group of strong actors to lend conviction to the adventure. Naomi Watts, partly thanks to the on-set participation of Serkis in his other role as Kong himself, interacts convincingly with Kong, while Black is charmingly evil as an Orson Welles-ian Denham, Brody an effective intellectual action hero and Kretschmann a handsome and brooding ship’s captain. The subplot involving Bell is interesting, but never really explored and Bell’s character is peremptorily abandoned once the drama moves to New York.

And then there is Kong himself, an effects wonder-of-the-world, who moves like a gorilla and has a face as expressive as any human. Like Gollum in The Two Towers and The Return Of The King, Kong is an authentic, fully-realised character, albeit a voiceless one, who will fulfil every lofty expectation audiences accustomed to top-notch effects may have.

Some of the other effects are less seamless, but then there are over 2,300 effects shots in the production. The Jurassic Park films somewhat rob the dinosaurs of their novelty value, although Jackson’s initial setpiece – the velociraptor chase and brontosaurus stampede – is breathtaking. As one brontosaurus tumbles over another, crushing humans and raptors in their path, the audience effect desired by Jackson – awestruck, heart-stopping wonder – is suitably achieved.

Jackson’s Skull Island is a sophisticated update on the original film – unreal, slightly set-bound and highly stylised. Unlike the 1976 King Kong, he never attempts to anchor the film in reality, a wise move bearing in mind the good-natured comic-strip mood of the piece.

The Empire State Building sequence, while too long, is nevertheless a visually bewitching finale, although quite how Ann can sustain the freezing temperatures dressed in a slip of a dress and heels is one of the many instances in the film where Jackson requires absolute suspension of disbelief. At least Kate Winslet shivered in sub-zero temperatures in Titanic.

Composer James Newton Howard, who stepped in at the 11th hour to replace Howard Shore, accompanies the action with a menacing score. Indeed, like Jurassic Park, much of the film will be too intense for younger children, not that they will want to see it any less desperately for that.
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www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=24417&r=true

----------------
Dec. 07, 2005

King Kong

By Kirk Honeycutt


The gorilla is great, the girl terrific, sets are out of this world, creatures icky as hell, and the director clearly does not believe in the word "enough." The new "King Kong" from Peter Jackson is both the measure of what striking images the world's most imaginative filmmakers can now put onscreen with digital effects, motion capture, models and miniatures and the drawback to these very toys.

Firmly believing that nothing succeeds like excess, Jackson and an army of technicians up the visual-effects ante with each passing minute. The wonder and excitement this initially inspires ebb gradually away in the third hour. It never completely disappears -- the movie does have a wow finale, after all. But expect debates to break out in theater lobbies over that blurry line between tongue-in-cheek exaggeration and directorial self-indulgence.

Following up on the triumph of his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Jackson has a slam-dunk worldwide boxoffice hit in "Kong." This is spectacle filmmaking at its best, where a director is in tune with the story's underlying emotions and his own boyish love for adventure fantasy. While sticking in outline to the 1933 classic by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, Jackson has added (and padded) the tale with action sequences, knowing dialogue and plot twists that wink back at audiences familiar with the original.

Jackson and longtime co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens envelop you in a world of movies: "Kong" is not just a remake of an old film but a movie about the making of such a movie. Realizing memories of the original linger in the minds of many, the writers retain the Depression-era setting while turning the voyage to Skull Island into a movie-making expedition.

Jack Black plays a risk-taking, Orson Wellesian producer-director, Carl Denham, who books a tramp steamer to uncharted South Pacific territory in hopes of turning out a travelogue/adventure film. When backers get the jitters and his actress takes a powder, he suddenly needs to bundle the crew aboard ship with a new actress overnight.

He persuades down-on-her-luck vaudevillian Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) to slip into the other actress' costumes -- both are size 4 -- to star opposite B-movie leading man Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler, having great fun with the part). Denham all but kidnaps hot young playwright-turned-film-scenarist Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). Because no cabin is available, Jack must hammer out the script in a cage meant for dangerous animals in the ship's hold, one of several amusing digs at the movie business throughout "Kong."

The crew consists of testy Capt. Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann), his level-headed assistant Preston (Colin Hanks), the eager youngster Jimmy (Jamie Bell) and the young man's steady minder in first mate Hayes (Evan Parke). Even during the ocean voyage, where mostly character development is taking place, Jackson builds tension through the steady beats of moving engine pistons, crew members sucking on cigarettes, fearful glances out to sea and composer James Newton Howard's musical swells.

On Skull Island, where the ship runs aground in a fog bank, the CGI really kicks in. The exaggerated topography takes in the fossilized remains of an ancient civilization, twisted and deformed vegetation, skulls and bones everywhere and ominous deep chasms spanned by rotting tree trunks, all this crawling with predatory life forms.

In an encounter with frightening-looking aborigines, the natives capture Ann to use as a sacrifice to the island's No. 1 Alpha male. Kong doesn't put in an appearance until the 70-minute mark, but he lives up to his billing. Jackson's go-to guy for live performance capture, Andy Serkis -- he played Gollum in "Rings" -- "acts" the Kong role, bringing a welter of emotions to his facial expressions and body contortions while encased in a gorilla muscle suit. Using the motion capture, Kong is then rendered on the screen with digital animation and miniature environments enhanced with CG matte paintings.

The courtship begins in earnest when Ann becomes the first eatable creature to ever provoke Kong's interest. In desperation for her life, Ann performs her vaudeville routines for the gorilla. This key relationship then develops logically and even whimsically. She represents to him a respite from brutality and killing while she recognizes in him the years of loneliness and ferocity that has lead to his "anger issues."

Surprisingly, the visual effects on the isle are sometimes shaky. A fight between Kong and three T. rex beasts goes on too long. A Brontosaurus stampede with actors running here and there among huge feet is phony looking, a puzzling lapse from a director in love with visual effects. A sequence involving huge sucking, biting, burrowing, devouring creatures and Jimmy machine-gunning them off the bodies of his compatriots is downright silly.

After Kong's capture and journey to wintry New York -- How? Not in that bucket of rusty bolts! -- the movie is ready for a somewhat anti-climactic third act. The filmmakers do manage a charming interlude before the Big Guy's rendezvous with the Empire State Building; he and Ann disengage from mayhem in Manhattan for a friendly slip-slide on the ice in Central Park. Then, in the final moments atop the tower, the movie does achieve a sense of the tragedy in the huge animal's inescapable death.

Watts is such a good actress that she can scream as well as Fay Wray in the original while vesting a B-movie character with genuine integrity and truth. Brody disappears from time to time but makes an effective counterbalance to Kong for the affections of Ann, a sort of Arthur Miller-ish intellectual wooing the blond actress. Black's filmmaker is fun but too shallowly conceived, making him little more than a collection of cliches about Hollywood insincerity and callousness.

Arguably, the film's most stunning achievement is its re-creation of 1933 New York in 3-D, which allows the movie to fly anywhere in this virtual city. Meanwhile, designer Grant Major re-created a city set that reportedly occupied seven acres of the New Zealand film studio while capturing the grit and glitz of Manhattan in the Depression. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie gives everything a soft vintage glow, as in an old postcard, while Howard's music feels as if it were lifted from a 1933 movie.
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www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/r ... 1001615413
 
I saw the trailer; it did not seem inspired.

Kong v Dino....yawn
 
That's because it's a remake and they're always a bad idea.

I'm sorry, it looks like a computer game. I'm a fan of Peter Jackson but I think he's made a mistake.

Sure people are going to go see it and say it's great and blah, blah, blah... And they've even included the infamous lost 'Spider Sequence'. But seeing the original in cinemas again, cleaned up with better sound and the original Spider pit scene re-inserted would get me more excited than this.

Which is probably why it'll never happen.
 
Well the London premier was last night and its gone down well with the Grauniad film critic (and he only gave LotR a 3):

King Kong

***** Cert 12A

Peter Bradshaw
Friday December 9, 2005
The Guardian



The mad and magnificent brilliance of one of cinema's most extraordinary images - the giant ape's last stand atop the Empire State Building, proclaiming doomed, counter-evolutionary defiance - is thrillingly revived in Peter Jackson's passionate remake of the 1933 classic by Cooper and Schoedsack.

His Kong is noble savage, anarchic beast, wounded kid and unloosed id. Alpha-male heroes don't get alphier than this, and like its mighty, hairy lead Jackson's film is big. Very big. At over three hours, it's almost twice as long as the original, telling the long and involved story of how Carl Denham (Jack Black) an adventure-travelogue film-maker modelled on Merian Cooper himself, journeys to the far-off Skull Island with author Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and winsome leading lady Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). There he finds a nest of dinosaurs and savages like something from Conan Doyle or Kipling, chances upon the enormous ape and, in a moment of mad hubris, decides to bring it back to the big city for profit. Kong himself is CGI-modelled by Andy Serkis.

It has to be admitted that the humans' performances are a little broad and there are some longueurs and moments when the narrative tendons and muscles go a little slack, especially at the very beginning. But you need these stretches of relative inaction to clear a space around that gobsmacking final scene, to give it due weight and focus, and indeed to clear a space around the 25ft gorilla himself. He is a heartbreaking and even tragic figure, his only companion a diminutive blonde who can never return his love, and no Ma to whom he could shout that he is top of the world.

This new Kong Kong is a folie de grandeur with real grandeur; in its power, its spectacle, and its spine-tinglingly beautiful vision of 1930s New York, it is a thing of wonder. It certainly equals, and even exceeds, anything Jackson did in Lord of the Rings. I admit that when I heard that Jackson proposed to revive the original in its Depression period setting, I thought it a failure of nerve. The first Kong was set in 1933, but made in 1933. It was fiercely contemporary. Was the idea of a modern destructive force endangering Manhattan's buildings in 2005 too uncomfortable for obvious reasons - especially considering that the very substandard 1976 remake had the ape shinning up the Twin Towers? Maybe. And yet Jackson brings such brio, such crystalline perfection to every detail of his 1930s city, that the proper reaction is not to cavil but to swoon.

The other interpretative option which Jackson has coolly chosen not to take up is making his heroine Ann Darrow an actual, explicit relative of Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer who argued the Darwinian case in the Monkey Trial eight years earlier in 1925 - within America's living memory. The coincidence is often noted, and the story of King Kong has a vividly satirical, yet ambiguous relationship to this still current debate.

In seeking to wrench Kong from his habitat, Denham might be exhibiting the scientist's transgression. But King Kong is close enough to homo sapiens to fall morganatically in love with a low-born human, yet his tragedy is: Ann can never be his queen. When Denham thinks he can capture and humiliate his uber-ape, and assert the primacy of humanity over this mighty ancestor, he may also exhibiting the creationist's vanity.

Everything the 1933 movie has, Jackson has - to the power of a hundred. The appearance of dinosaurs as well as a giant ape may look excessive, yet the point is that Kong, the old softy, has to rescue Ann from these predators, and Jackson's brings out his simian gallantry far more clearly in this version. He also gleefully restores the famously cut "spider-pit" sequence and his skin-crawlingly horrible creations will make arachnophobes of us all.

There's no cage strong enough for the sheer brute strength of Jackson's movie, a muscularity matched by its ingenuous love for the great beast himself. Like his tiny blonde worshipper, you will be in the palm of his hand.

-------------
· Released on Thursday 15 Dec
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http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/C ... 36,00.html

By Jove I think he might have done it again :)

It needs to be at $200 milllion!!

You can track the box office take here:
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=kingkong05.htm

Out on the 14th in the US.
 
I don't care how good it is. No movie about a giant friggin' ape needs to be 187 minutes long.

:wtf:

Methinks I'll wait for this buttstinger to come out on DVD.
 
ogopogo3 said:
I don't care how good it is. No movie about a giant friggin' ape needs to be 187 minutes long.

:wtf:

Methinks I'll wait for this buttstinger to come out on DVD.
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No, it doesn't need to be 187 minutes long. But that said, go and see it on the big screen. I just did, and didn't regret a single minute of it.

It's awesome. Yes, he could have lost a good 30 minutes from the first, pre-Kong segment with no real noticeable impact on the narrative, but it's still not a flaw: the opening hour certainly isn't boring by any stretch, and from then on in it delivers in spades.

See it. Just go and see it. You won't regret it.
 
Don't mess with the ape!

He's a complicated monster, and no one understands him like his woman. But King Kong will always win our respect, says novelist Toby Litt

Thursday December 15, 2005
The Guardian

Ant and Dec's Gameshow Marathon culminated recently in their cover version of Family Fortunes (the greatest game-show format ever). And one of their our-survey-said questions was: "Name a famous monster from film or TV." Top answer, bing, with more than 30% of the popular vote, was King Kong - stomping on Dracula, who came a very distant second.

Given that pre-publicity for Peter Jackson's mega-budget remake had hardly begun, this was a remarkably healthy showing for a beast who emerged from the cinematic jungle almost three-quarters of a century ago. But the public has always loved Kong - and with good reason. In fact, with a host of good reasons.

King Kong was trailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, and his roaring entrance quite late on in the 1933 original movie is still one of the great showstoppers. Here, you feel, is a presence befitting the golden age of the silver screen. It is easy to forget, but when Kong appears he is life-size. Everyone else is magnified by the medium; Kong stands as its equal.

A previous generation, watching smaller screens and listening to the plonk of a piano, had fallen in love with the iconic black-on-white face of Chaplin's tramp. Now, to an incessant orchestra soundtrack, and with the screen reaching almost to the far edges of the audience's vision, they were terrified by two white dots and a white square emerging from the pitch dark - a square full of sharp shining teeth. These new cinemas weren't just street-corner kinematographs, they were blockbusting Picture Palaces - and every palace requires a king.

In his book Elvis, Albert Goldman expands upon proudly republican America's fascination with what they got rid of: royalty and all its trappings. There is an element of anti-monarchical satire in King Kong. Look at the primitive peoples, worshipping their apish king! But every pop cultural moment has had its royal figure, from the jazz musician King Oliver through Elvis, up to Michael Jackson, "king of pop".

Kong assumed the throne at a particular moment of crisis in American history. In the darkest days of the Depression, some wanted to laugh all their troubles away, some to scream. If there was a national mood, then surely it was the mood of this film: rage - most particularly, rage against the machine. The west had lost almost all its wildness, and the sophisticated markets of the east had handed out nothing but poverty. When Kong climbs the Empire State Building, he is mounting as potent a symbol of American self-belief as the Twin Towers. The frisson of city-destruction that audiences later got from Independence Day was invented here.

At this point, as he smashes up Manhattan, Kong is a rebel without a cause. What does he want? Nothing positive - just to be left alone. Unlike everyone else in the film, he is uninterested in money. He has no desire to climb socially; that isn't why he scales the tallest building he can find. What he wants is merely a return to the status quo, a return to nature. Clearly, the island paradise from which he was kidnapped wasn't Eden; Eden didn't involve regular virgin sacrifice. But behind Kong's rage, as we see in close-ups of his face, is immense loneliness. And the nearer the film draws to its end, the more overwhelming this loneliness becomes.

The film begins by quoting an old Arabian proverb: "And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead." This is the moral that Kong's downfall is repeatedly given within the film itself.

The back-story starts when movie director Carl Denham comes across a map of a mysterious island, terrorised by a huge beast. Once he has decided to go and try to film that beast, he realises that the public will demand a beauty to go with it. Searching the streets for a heroine, Denham comes across a starving young woman, trying to resist stealing an apple from a stall. She will satisfy the public's own hunger. And so the anonymous hordes, who crowd around the bottom of the Empire State Building to witness the floodlit climax, are the ultimate cause of Kong's death.

"The public gets what the public wants" is one alternative to the explicit "Beauty kills the Beast" moral, which is made so clunkingly and so often that one can't help but go looking for others. Putting Kong in the lineage of big-screen monsters, there is another obvious lesson to be drawn. If the moral of Godzilla is "don't mess with nuclear material" and of Jurassic Park "don't mess with genetic material", the moral of King Kong is simpler still: "Don't pick a fight with nature." Unlike Godzilla and T-Rex, Kong isn't a man-created mutation or re-creation. He is, for better or for worse, the product of the same evolutionary processes that brought about mankind. He is, as we have to recognise, so like us that he might as well be us. But not exactly.

The racial subtext of the film isn't far beneath the surface. A clear hierarchy is established early on, descending from white woman (Fay Wray) to Chinese man (the cook) to black man (the natives) to gorilla (Kong). When they reach the island where Kong lives, and see the virgin sacrifice about to take place, Carl Denham jokes: "Blondes are scarce around here." But in the end, when Kong's noble savagery is proven, this ladder of superiority is undermined. It's not too much to see American guilt over slavery written all through the film.

If you were being flip, you might even call King Kong the first blaxploitation film. Certainly, he's a complicated ape, and no one understands him like his woman. But he is also a big, powerful, black and unavoidably sexual presence (though notably without visible sexual organs).

In a contemporary, less political context, Kong comes close to having universal appeal, although he appeals to different age groups in very different ways. To small children, Kong appears like an exaggerated adult: vast, hairy and terrifying when angry. To adolescents, he's their own punk energy personified. To the middle-aged, he is the monster of rage that we all have to suppress - the desire to bring the city to its knees that Michael Douglas succumbs to in Falling Down. And to those older still, he seems, as he rampages between the skyscrapers, like a toddler among tables and chairs. He has the same eloquent roar, the same wobbly walk, the same unquenchable appetite for destruction.

But why remake King Kong now? I think there is a very simple, technical explanation: we have just reached a point in the development of digital special effects when large areas of hair can convincingly be shown. If you don't believe me, check out Sully in Monsters Inc for the best that could be done in 2001. Pretty good, but not good enough to carry a movie. And certainly not fit for a king.

---------------
· King Kong is released today.
Click to expand...

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/fea ... 00,00.html
 
But why remake King Kong now? I think there is a very simple, technical explanation: we have just reached a point in the development of digital special effects when large areas of hair can convincingly be shown. If you don't believe me, check out Sully in Monsters Inc for the best that could be done in 2001. Pretty good, but not good enough to carry a movie. And certainly not fit for a king.
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Intreging explaination
 
Monkey in the Middle

The 800-pound gorilla is a wonder to behold, but the movie's too damn long to sit through.

by Sean Burns


It wasn't beauty that killed the beast-it was bloat.

At an ass-numbing 187 minutes, Peter Jackson's King Kong suffers from a fatal case of elephantitis. In this agonizingly overwrought almost scene-for-scene remake of a movie half its length, Jackson saps all the fun out of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsacks' fleet-footed 1933 roller-coaster ride, replacing the original picture's happy-go-lucky showmanship with a grindingly slow-paced, Titanic-y formula of clutter, bathos and noise.

Kong is long, long, long. It feels like the longest movie I've ever seen. Sure, there may have been a few pictures in the past that took a bit more screen time to get their points across. Schindler's List, for example, lasts exactly eight minutes longer than this popcorn flick about a people-eating ape. On the other hand, Akira Kurosawa's Ran clocks in a full 27 minutes shorter than King Kong.

It's more than an hour before the giant monkey even shows up for work. Jackson fritters away this early screen time unwisely. He sets up artificial character arcs for broad, one-dimensional figures who aren't going to make it past the second act, and supplies useless back-story about Jack Black's unscrupulous movie producer Carl Denham, Naomi Watts' tenderhearted ingenue Ann Darrow and Adrien Brody's sensitive Jack Driscoll. (Driscoll is transformed from a tough sailor in the original picture to a Clifford Odets-style playwright-of-the-common-people, presumably brought on board to give Black's project that Barton Fink feeling.)

But we came to see the 800-pound gorilla, and when Kong finally arrives, he's a wonder to behold. By far the most charismatic character in the picture, this astonishing creation of Jackson's WETA workshops was "acted" by Andy Serkis, who did similarly amazing motion-capture work as The Lord of the Rings' Gollum. Boasting wide, expressive eyes and a snarky sense of humor, the colossal beast represents a breakthrough in movie-making technology.

It's almost as if the special-effects department spent so much time getting every detail of Kong's fur down so exactly right, they had to let the rest of the stuff slide. Skull Island is once again a labyrinth of massive prehistoric creatures. The place is teeming with angry dinosaurs, giant killer spiders and enormous vampire bats. But from the first time our heroes get caught in the midst of a brontosaurus stampede, something feels fishy with the visuals. The humans aren't quite integrated properly with their digital counterparts, giving their interactions a fluttery weightlessness.

The dino charge is also indicative of another of the screenplay's weaknesses. It's a self-contained, disposable set piece that exists only for its own sake. Most of the film's big-money action scenes do nearly nothing to advance the story. They're just noisy video-game interludes that could be dropped by a sloppy projectionist and nobody in the audience would notice.

The nadir is a pit full of killer bugs, based on a bit that was famously cut from the 1933 original. I'm normally not one to pick logical holes in dumb science-fiction fantasies, but how exactly does a little kid figure out how to shoot a bunch of spiders off his friends' bodies with a machine gun and not accidentally hit anyone? Come on-that's just crummy writing.

There's one all-out terrific action sequence, pitting Kong against three snarling T-Rexes until they all roll off a cliff and fight while dangling from some vines. For a brief few moments the movie comes alive with wit and invention, ditching Jackson's self-seriousness and actually having some fun for a change.

It doesn't last long. Jackson, who penned the script with his usual collaborators Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, even finds a way to botch the original's seemingly foolproof finale. As our title character gets revved up and ready to stomp all over New York City, the writers seem to think we give a crap how Adrien Brody's and Naomi Watts' Broadway careers turned out.

Just in case we forgot that Brody was inspired to write a comedy play for Watts, Jackson is kind enough not only to show us the premiere, but also replays the audio track of an entire scene when it was discussed earlier in the movie, just in case anybody went out for popcorn.

Hey Petey, isn't there a giant monkey getting pissed somewhere down the block? Are we gonna get back to that anytime soon?

I'm still unclear where the thousands of screaming New Yorkers disappear to once King Kong and Ann Darrow decide to go ice skating in Central Park. I was, though, tickled by Jackson's inside joke of including a sunrise during his Empire State Building climax. That's right, folks-the ending of this movie is so hideously protracted that as it drags on and on we're actually able to watch it turn into the next day.

Peter Jackson claims the 1933 Kong is his favorite movie, and remaking it was a way to pay homage to something that inspired him as a child. The irony is that by ballooning the slender story out of all proportion with such relentless bombast and treacle (Jackson is far too fond of dewy-eyed slow-motion close-ups), he asphyxiates the original picture's pioneering, pulpy spirit. I guess you only hurt the ones you love.
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http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=11177
 
Now that we've had a chance to see it, what does everyone think?
Was it worth it?

My opinion is yes. It was an awesome slice of entertainment. There were so many jaw dropping moments on Skull Island, and the ending is more heartbeaking than ever.
 
I've not seen it yet - I'm waiting until my mates can clear a large enough slice of time in their schedules.

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Two stories about its box office take:

Kong fails to grab US filmgoers

Jon di Paolo
Monday December 19, 2005
The Guardian

Its gorilla may be gargantuan and its special effects budget spectacularly huge, but the latest blockbuster movie from America is having problems pulling in cinemagoers in equally enormous proportions.

Peter Jackson's costly remake of King Kong, one of the most hyped movies of the year, has limped rather than sprinted out of the blocks at the North American box office.

Its distributor, Universal Pictures, revealed that the film had made $66.2m (£37.3m) since opening last Wednesday. Though enough to propel it to top spot in the box office rankings, the sales disappointed analysts, who had expected the film to gross nearer $90m.

"It was realistically a tough sell, despite the industry and media hype," said Brandon Gray, president of the online tracking service Boxofficemojo.com. "It's incredibly tricky to get audiences excited about a movie that doesn't have a strong human character."

The film may have been hindered by "next-to-zero star power" and the random nature of the special effects, he added.

Jackson's previous film, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, also released on a Wednesday, earned $75m in its first five days.

King Kong also opened internationally last Wednesday, generating $80m from 55 non-US markets in its first five days.

King Kong has been hampered by its three-hour running time, which restricts the number of times it can play in theatres, and its release during a busy shopping period when most children have not started their school holidays.

However, Universal's vice-chairman, Marc Shmuger, dismissed the criticism as "based on ignorance", pointing out the film is neither part of a franchise nor based on a literary property.

He said the three-day haul for the film beat the comparable $44.2m figure for Lord of the Rings, and that the midweek opening had allowed word of the film to spread, especially among women - who had seemed less than impressed with the ape's adventures in pre-release surveys. By Saturday, 47% of the audience was female, he said.

The portents are not all bad. In 1997, Titanic overcame a relatively modest opening to become an all-time cinematic box office smash.
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http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0 ... 78,00.html

Ape sees off Lion at US box office

Staff and agencies
Monday December 19, 2005

King Kong's opening weekend in the US may have been less spectacular than hoped for, but it was enough to propel the ape to the apex of the American box office.

Peter Jackson's three-hour remake of the 1933 classic took just $9.8m (£5.5m) on its opening day last Wednesday, but a 40% leap in audiences on Saturday took its weekend haul to $50.1m (£28.3m), more than adequate to topple The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from the top spot.

The film also did relatively well outside the US, debuting at number one in 53 of the 55 countries where it was shown and pulling in an estimated $63.4m in the process.

Elsewhere on the US chart Disney's CS Lewis spectacular The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe held up well, taking second place with another $31.1m in its second week.

Christmas comedy drama The Family Stone, which sees Sarah Jessica Parker in her first movie role post-Sex and the City, managed a respectable opening haul of $12.7m to enter the chart at third place.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was fourth with another $5.9m - the film has now taken more than $250m in the States.

The top five was rounded out by the Stephen Gaghan's impassioned political thriller Syriana, which took $5.4m, possibly off the back of George Clooney's Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor.

As for Ang Lee's gay cowboys, they did rather well - in the week that Brokeback Mountain garnered seven Golden Globe nominations, the number of screens showing the film doubled despite its R-rating, rocketing the film up from 15th to 8th place with $2.3m.
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http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0 ... 30,00.html

I suspect it isn't going to be as bleak as that makes out - everyone I know is far too busy at the moment to spare the large slab of time and I'd iamgne a lot of people are like that - when things are less hectic between Xmas and New Years I'd imagine more people will go so it should do solid buisness for weeks.

Someone should have a word in Peter Jackson's earhole about possibly not making another 3 hour film next time around - unless its The Hobbit then I say go for it. ;)
 
Great movie, the Skull Island effects were amazing and you completely forgot that you were looking a computer-generated leading character. Motion capture with talented physical actor like Andy Serkis is the way to cog with fantasy creatures.

The final sequence is stunning, and vertigo inducing if you don't like heights.

For once a remake that doesn't lose everything that was great about the original.
 
I'm afraid to say that it's one of the worst films I've had the displeasure in seeing in a long while.
As was mentioned in the reviews above, it's ridiculously overlong, and, for me, the effects were appalling, you could almost see the joins between CGI effects and "real" scenes. And surely the point of the original was it was primarily about a big monkey running rampage, not some ridiculously contrived chracterisations (step forward Adrien Brody).
Why can't they leave classics alone...?
Oh yes, now I remember, it's a quick buck...
 
I saw the original for the first time today and was not impressed, the effects would certainly have been good for the time but the trouble was the acting in the original was so ropey that it ruined any suspension of disbelief I had.

For example when they are getting charged by the stegy it looks like most of them have forgotten their lines and are just adlibbing... badly.

Very over-rated, I've a feeling the only reason it's not been forgotten about forever and consigned to the dustbin of history was it's special effects.
 
i must agree that the stampede scene (amongst others0 was undeniably bad special effects wise. using green screen digital matting, it looked more like televisual chromakey super imposed madness. the actors looked like they were on treadmills and the background thrown bebieth them like a dick n dom effect broadcast live and on no budget at all. the interaction between digital effect and live action made ray harrihousen's creations look, well, less purple and strobing. (hint, get the forarms right next time)
what happened to the people of skull island after one or two were shot? why did the capture and subsequent voyage taking kong * let me point out that he was based on a silver back mountain gorilla and not a 'monkey' as was mentioned in an earlier post* to new york not feature at all but then trivialities like character introductions in the first half hour (ie; the leading lady's uncle etc) were?
also, the anthropomorphist scenes where kong laughed at the lady falling when he toyed with her was simply commerce over art and destroyed any feelings of belief in what is essentially unbelievable anyway.
whatever, that woman would have suffered extreme brain trauma in the first 3 seconds of kong picking her up and swinging her about at the speeds in excess of 140 miles an hour, never mind the following crashes to the jungle gound for the next 3 minutes.
Laugh? i did. i enjoyed it and thought it was alright despite the bits and bobs, afterall, it wasn't a mushy yank parable and would have been if spielberg or similar had have remade it. * visions of will smith with a star spangled banner shoved into kong's nostril representing the defeat of the east and biting the but off a cigar to an anthem of god bless us many men* ;)
i give it the thumbs up, but then again, i watched it on dvd on thursday last.
 
I just lurv! the original 'King Kong'. I saw it, in all it's original B&W glory, on the big screen, in 1976, when it was re-released to coincide with the De Laurentis produced remake.

It had been given an 'U' certificate, for general distribution. 40 odd years after its original release, the censors must have thought it's shock value was long gone by. It was an afternoon matinee and several of mothers had unwisely brought their young children. By the time we'd reached the bit where Kong fights the tyrannosaur, rips its jaws open and stomps it, there was so much screaming and howling it was amazing! Many kids didn't even make it as far as Kong's rampage through the native village, they had already been dragged out, traumatised, by their mothers.

Great stuff! :lol:

Frankenfurter was right, Fay Wray was absolutely the erotic goods in that pre-Hays Code, figure hugging, satin slip that she wore. :wow:
 
I really enjoyed this as it was a film and I was able to suspend my beliefs about a huge ape, living dinosaurs, big bugs etc etc. But thank god they didnt turn it into the drivle that was War of the Worlds at least they kept it in its original setting. Yes some of the effects looked a bit ropey and more time could have been shaved from he beginning but no one has mentioned the worst part yet. I wont spoil it for you but look out for Jamie Bell. ;)
 
Why is this one 3 hours long when the original one wasn't? :_omg:

Looks to CGI too, least the 1930's one was a chimp in a model city.

Might go and see it as Kong reminds me of myself. 8)
 
lol! Chimp in a model city?
It was stop frame animation mixed with large animatronics.
What gives it class is the *Urgh but they used dyed rabbit fur! :evil: * way the hair flickers from where hands have been in between frames to manipulate the model. They hadn't quite got the speed ratio right so it looked like Kong was on speed! :lol:
 
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